She did. She hated it most when she understood him as completely as her own reflection. Each of them represented the greatest injustice of their lives to each other. Hero, the books Claire had never gotten to write, the failure that had punished her to Hell, and the betrayal that had left her alone. Likewise, Claire was the librarian who kept books quiet, and one of the human authors every book turned to like sunlight. It wasn’t easy, making peace with the wound inside your heart, but she and Hero had managed, in their own halting ways.
Help had been a foreign concept between them once. They’d started out hunter and hunted, librarian and book, but even after she and Hero had come to some kind of accord, what they’d done for each other had never been help. It’d been a simple alignment of priorities, happening to point their shared rage in the same direction, instead of at each other. It’d taken the deaths of hundreds, damsels and books, to cement their places at each other’s side. She couldn’t be to Hero what Rami was, but that didn’t make what they were any less important. What Hero was to her required a harder word than “friendship,” a word with teeth. Family. Hers.
He couldn’t be hers. But there it was: he was hers, and Brevity was hers and Rami was hers and no matter how tightly Claire held on, she felt like she was losing them all. It made a kind of sense, an aching kind of sense, to try loosening her grip. Maybe she owed him that much.
Hero was staring at her. The emerald in his eyes was closer to malachite, dark and intense and gritty with a kind of vulnerability that obviously scared him. “Please, Claire,” he said again, softer.
Her resolve broke, and a rush of breath left her. “We can . . . try.” She bit her lip, almost snatching the words back before she shook her head resolutely. “Okay. We can try. I don’t believe this will work, but I’ll help.”
Hero took a sharp breath, snagged on the apex of surprise. He went pale with it before color flushed back into his cheeks. Claire was idly amazed at how much she’d learned the tells of Hero’s emotions. He nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Please don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Thank me.” Claire began to clear her work surface, adjusting the light. “You’ve already asked for help. And said ‘please.’ I don’t think my poor mortal heart can take it.” She risked a glance at him with a surprised smile. “Your adventure with Rami has changed you.”
Hero sniffed. “Change? Me? Never. I am constant as the sun.”
“And just as insufferable.” Claire patted the tabletop. “Get your book out and press back the pages like I showed you. I’ll go see if I can coax the ink into a nib. I still hold that this is the worst idea.”
She was halfway to the shelves when Hero muttered, barely audibly, “All our best options usually are.”
24
BREVITY
There’s been a political fracas here in Hell. Suddenly, the Arcanist is a new demon by the name of Andras. He is polite, generous with his time, and professional to a fault. I don’t like him.
My apprentice will accuse me of being unkind. He is not wrong—I am too well trained to be a warm person. But that is not the source of my dislike. Gregor hasn’t grasped the basic truth of the realms yet. Hell and other realms are filled with a compelling cast of personalities. Demons, muses, jinni, spirits, and ancestral forces. Creatures that can feel, covet, love, hate. The truth is this: they are not human. Humanity isn’t defined by feeling, or the facsimile therein. Humanity is defined by fragility. We are a cherry blossom, and they are the frost.
Frost melts, but it is the blossom that dies.
Librarian Yoon Ji Han 1804, CE
PROBITY HADN’T HESITATED. ONCE Brevity finally agreed to her experiment, it had been a swift cascade of consequential actions. The only delay had been on agreeing to a time and location.
“Not in the Unwritten Wing,” Brevity said firmly.
“But, sis, it’s the simplest—”
“No.” And Brevity wouldn’t budge on this, even for Probity. “We can’t do this anywhere near the books.” It felt wrong. Even aside from all the logistic concerns, the idea of unlocking inspiration in a muse by using the ink, with all the unwritten books of humanity looking on, made Brevity uncomfortable. It felt disrespectful, like she was sullying the Library. But Probity wouldn’t understand that—there was no such thing as the Library, as a thing greater than its parts. The only concern Probity understood was concern for the books and for Brevity. So Brev stuck to logistics. “It’s too big a risk if something goes wrong.”
“No stories are in danger. Nothing is going to go wrong,” Probity insisted with certainty, but she relented. “I doubt you’re going to feel comfortable taking it outside of Hell, sis. Is there a room?”
Finding a room in Hell turned out to not be as difficult as one might imagine. Hell was a vast realm, and since souls sent themselves where they needed to be, one might say attendance had dropped over the centuries. Damnation was too constant an idea to ever die out entirely, but it could fall out of fashion.
An empty hall proved the best option, improved by its adjacent location to the transport office. Brevity had fabricated an especially urgent emergency for Walter, emphasizing the absolute need for privacy, and
